Augmented reality, poetry, and participatory performance art showcase Boston’s “Hidden Histories” in Emerson Contemporary’s latest exhibition. The gallery installed four public art pieces in popular urban spaces, including Beacon Hill, Boston Common, and on the MBTA.
Emerson Contemporary brought four artists on as community research fellows. Each spent a year reviewing historical archives, selecting a topic largely unfamiliar to the public to examine in their pieces.
“The artists are introducing the audience to things they don’t know about Boston and about our history,” said Leonie Bradbury, Emerson Contemporary’s distinguished curator-in-residence. “It’s very much about revealing things that are maybe in plain sight and that we don’t necessarily see.”
Elisa Hamilton, Emerson ‘18, examined the life of Louis Glapion, a biracial barber and hairdresser who built one of the oldest existing homes in Beacon Hill with his friend George Middleton. While both men contributed to the home, the building is only known as the “Middleton House,” a 1778 two-family residence on Pinckney Street.
During her research, Hamilton discovered documentation about Glapion’s life, piquing her curiosity as to why Middleton achieved recognition, while Glapion remained unknown.
“I hope that it [the exhibit] will excite a sense of delight and curiosity about the site and about Louis Glapion,” said Hamilton. “I hope that people take note of that, and I hope that they wonder what other stories we’re missing. This is just one story of one man who lived this noteworthy, interesting life as a middle-class businessman, black, successful property owner in Boston.”
Visitors can access Hamilton’s piece, entitled “Glimpses of Glapion,” via the augmented reality app Hoverlay while standing in front of the Middleton House. Upon opening the program, viewers will see items introducing them to Glapion’s life and career, including a filter depicting what 1700s hairstyles might look on them.
“As an artist who creates participatory artworks and interactive installations, I kind of moved more and more towards, ‘how can I make this something that people are interacting with?’” said Hamilton. “One of the things that I realized about augmented reality is that it’s at its best when it’s participatory.”
Hamilton is not the only artist to incorporate augmented reality. In “The Black Boston Dream Oracle,” Clareese Hill, an immersive artist and assistant professor at Northeastern, reinterprets the text,“The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book,” written by 19th-century Massachusetts resident Chloe Russel, through a Black feminist lens. Hill’s exhibition includes three installments in Beacon Hill.
The third project in the “Hidden Histories” series is a collection of visual poems by writer and visual artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed. She conducted her research at the Boston Athenaeum, where she collected samples of texts and fonts to create digital designs of her writing—poetry inspired by Toni Morrison. These designs are displayed on digital billboards throughout the city, including within the T’s Green and Orange Line cars.
While most of the inspiration for “Hidden Histories” pieces came from on-site archival research, Sue Murad’s idea came from her walk to get there through the Boston Common.
Murad describes herself as a “cultural anthropologist,” focusing on how humans interact with everyday objects.
“If I’m thinking about art, I’m looking at architecture, the ways people interact with space,” said Murad. “When I’m walking through the Common, I’m noticing everything, from the benches and the lamps and the vendors…I’m really noting both the physical objects that are in the place, but also the human rhythms that are there.”
In Murad’s project, “ASSEMBLE: Performance Instructions for Public Arrangements,” the artist focuses on the Common, comparing its historical uses with how residents utilize it today.
For her piece, she created interactive prompts on signs throughout the park that encourage passersby to engage in actions such as looking for a group of clovers and lying down.
“Each prompt is an action that is very simple and anybody can do, but in some way expands on what we already do in the Common. It just adds a little bit more of a formative element,” said Murad. “Even though it’s based on words and is an instruction, the experience that I’m writing into is non-verbal and embodied instead.”
For a continuation of these experiences, Murad will lead sessions guiding park goers through the actions on Oct. 3–5. Interested parties should meet at the Visitor Center at noon.
“Hidden Histories” is part of Boston’s “Un-Monument” project, an initiative that encourages the public to engage with their surroundings through temporary artistic installations.
The installations will remain open until Oct. 28.
